7/10/2007

Political party manifesto 5

No one shall be deprived of hospital care A motherhood statement that is politicallly correct to say but must be seen to be done. Means testing may be one way to do it to make sure that no one is deprived of hospital care and no one shall take advantage of hospital subsidies. Of course this is debatable. There are many ways to skin a cat. Maybe skinning a cat is not the right choice of phrase as it connotes the meaning of tearing off something and causing pain. There are many ways of providing health care, or there are many ways of charging health care. I think for political parties, the key issue is how to provide health care at a reasonable cost and not how to make profits from the sick. But both can still exist side by side, make profits to subsidise the less able to pay. At the profit end, there are people who are willing to pay and it is criminal not to make profits from them. At the lower end when people are sick and unable or unwilling to pay too much, it is sinful to force them to pay. Political parties have to strike a balance between the two and hopefully making one pays for the other. It would be nice to hear political parties come out with a position that B2 and C wards will be subsidised without the tedious and mean process of means testing. That people are given a choice to choose to pay little or pay more and the hospital facilities structured accordingly. Political parties should not have evil thoughts and mean minds to skin the poor and those who do not want to be skinned. The attempt to skin, the obsession to skin is bad.

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